17:26 – Back home, care team meeting today and help needed!!

Well I’m back home. I actually came home on Monday afternoon but have only just remembered I didn’t write a post! To cut a long story short I came home on a long weekend pass from Thursday evening until Sunday afternoon. I was feeling really positive and happy being back with my friends and in my own space again.

On Sunday night I felt my mood hit a low partly due to being back in the bin and away from my family and friends again;  but mostly it was because I was terrified of going for the CT scan of my head that they had arranged. Whilst my agoraphobia is so much better than it was this time last year I still feel a huge amount of panic when going anywhere new or being in a place I can’t escape from. So I tossed and turned all night then went into my review on Monday morning.

He asked how the pass had gone and I told him it had gone really well but that I was terrified of going for the scan. There were six members of staff on that morning when usually there are only four so I asked if we could make it a little less distressing for me and let me go with a member of staff in a car rather than the patient transport buses they use for all patients with appointments at the main hospital that day. So my appointment was at 2pm but I was being collected at noon because someone had an appointment at 1pm or something. The main hospital is around 35 miles away (along a long and bendy road) from the psych hospital and they said it took just under an hour to get there.

Now at this point I’m sitting thinking ‘oh my God, what if someone has an appointment for say, 4pm? I’ll need to stay there all day and won’t be able to escape’ so I start to become extremely anxious. I tell the psych how bad I am feeling, how scared and anxious I am, I correct myself and tell him I’m terrified. I start to cry because the anxiety is making me feel hot and my heart palpitating. I ask him please could a member of staff take me so I know I can just go there and then come straight back.

He says No.

By now I’m properly crying and again asking – begging – for him to compromise with me in some way. If I couldn’t have a member of staff take me then could he at least give me a medication to calm me down for the journey so I could try and manage it that way.

He says No.

I then start asking him why? Why when people stood in front of me in the medication queue was every single person offered some kind of sedative – diazepam, lorazepam, zopiclone – they were the most common three words you would hear. I wasn’t on any kind of sleeper other than my normal daily prescribed dose of diazepam, of which, I’m in some sort of reduction program for. So as I have taken Diazepam/Valium for so long it doesn’t affect me in the slightest at my 18mg a day dose. The only times it affects me is when I don’t take it or miss a dose. I got the full shakes, severe anxiety, was panicking, and paranoid about everything, from just a 2mg drop from 20mg. Was he trying to punish me for something? Of course he says no he isn’t.

So I’m getting really really wound up by this point. I say to him that there is a least distressing way of getting me there or a most distressing way – why was he picking the most distressing one? He says as I managed fine on the bus getting home on Thursday night and as I managed the car journey back on the Sunday that I could manage this without medication and that going on the patient transport bus was the way I was going up there. I start to really cry and can feel the anger building up inside me. I almost begin to shout as I get louder, “have you not listened to a single thing I’ve said to you over the past God knows how many years?! Have you not heard me talk about the Agoraphobia that YOU diagnosed six YEARS ago??” 

He replies. “I think it’s time for you to face your fear. If you think you can’t manage it then we’ll cancel the scan and you can do it another time”. This makes me even more angry. I shout through my tears that I want discharged from that horrible place as soon as possible. He kinda looked almost like he shrugged his shoulders in a not bothered kinda way and repeated “I’ll just cancel the scan then shall I?” followed by “and I’ll arrange your discharge medication?”

What the fuck? If he thought I was well enough to be discharged on the Thursday then why didn’t he say so? Why make my parents drive all the way back up there on the Sunday to say I could be discharged the next day? Why tell me I had to be back on Sunday due to the scan? Everything was just swimming around confused in my head. I stood up angrily and said “write up my discharge medication asap”. Then, like a 13 year old, I slam the door behind me as hard as I could.

I got the bus home an hour later.

So onto today, I had a care team meeting this morning which was me, my psychologist (yes the pregnant one that I found it almost impossible to look at), my new CPN (who met me once and the next day told the pharmacy to only prescribe me daily medication), my social worker and my psychiatrist. The fucking idiot man that he is. Yes I’m still pissed off at him.

We just spoke about where we are going to go with things next. They basically described what work they want to do with me individually and how it can all link together. We are now going to have a Care Plan Approach and I’m meeting with the new CPN who I’ll call J on Friday morning to see what changes need to be made to my Crisis Plan. Then everyone in the care team will have a copy of it I think.

After the meeting this morning I spent a few hours with my friend and the little one, we took a wander round the shops and I have bought myself a present that I collect tomorrow. Two baby fire-tailed finches. They look just like this but I’ll take an actual photo once I get them home and introduce you all. I have one problem though – I have no names for them! They are both males so suggestions below pleaseeeeeee – I need you guys to help me!!